You know…a TIME WARP! Its a favorite device of science fiction writers, but I swear they exist! Take Wyoming, RI-nobody there seems to know any US history after about 1965!
Of course, the best time warp town was Hooterville (the town in the old TV show “GREEN ACRES”). When Oliver told a guy he was going to Washington DC, the reply was “Is Hoover still president”!
Shre your “Time Warp” stories here! 
In a lot of ways Salt Lake City seemed to be in a Time Warp when I lived there in the 1980s (and when I visited it with my bride-to-be several years later). The Cosmic Aeroplane was an honest-to-God “Head Shop”, straight out of the 1960’s. The big Friday Night activity for teens was cruisin’ State Street. There were “stripper bars” like the Jocord that kept getting closed on bogus health code violations, and where the strippers couldn’t actually strip down beyond what amounted to a two-piece bathing suit.
Of course, the streets were incredibly clean, you could actually park downtown at night, there weren’t any slums, and you felt generally safe – much safer than other cities of comparable size.
About 1980 I got off the interstate somewhere in Wyoming to get gas, and found myself in “Coffeeville.” The town basically consisted of an antique gas station with old-timey pumps like you would see in a 1930s movie. It was run by a guy in his seventies wearing overalls named Bob Coffee, who looked like one of the extras from Hooterville. (Yes, I have met Mr. Coffee.) I was afraid that when I tried to get back on the interstate I would hear Twilight-Zone music and find that it was just a gravel road packed with Okies heading west.
I swear to God that Norman Oklahoma has some sort of time warp in it.
You see that twisted area? Sure, it looks like the streets there just go along with the rail road tracks, instead of a NSEW direction, but actually all the streets are bent like that because the very fabric of space is twisted. If you have to go through that part of town it always takes longer than it should. Why? Because the twist in time and space that exists there. It may be that there is a black hole at the train station or maybe the time traveling train from BttF3 was built or destroyed there but whatever it is the effect is real and clearly visible on the map.
Blairsville, Georgia was like that, up in the mountains near Tennessee. Very scenic area, but the town itself was tiny, and felt “left behind in time.”
I live in Los Angeles, California. My SO at the time joined the army reserves and was stationed at Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina. My best friend and I took a Greyhound bus across the country to go see him graduate boot camp (and THAT’S another whole story in itself – surreal to the extreme, Hunter S. Thompson style!).
Now, Columbia is the capitol of South Carolina, and is a major urban city, so you wouldn’t necessary peg it for being in a time warp…but it is, socially. The first taxi driver we had when we arrived went on and on about how the state was about 65 years behind the rest of the country. For example: the Confederate Flag, that historical bastion of racism, hatred and intolerance, had just been removed from the top of the Captiol Building the previous week.
And moved to a statue in front of the Capitol Building.
:eek: 
:eek: :eek:
And this was in 2000!
Also, tattoo parlors were illegal in the state, but I was unaware of this when I arrived. So imagine my surprise when I was thumbing through the phone book, looking for a place to buy a replacement ball for my tongue piercing, and the closest tattoo/piercing shop was in Georgia!
And the race thing. I’m white, and my former SO is Guatemalan, so walking down the street holding hands we drew stares of confusion and consternation and sometimes unmasked hatred. His family was stared at. When we went to eat in a restaurant, we were made to wait over other (white) people who came in after us and the hostess would hardly speak to my SO’s brother. And when I tried to make a purchase at a convenience store, the (black) cashier 1) ignored me for two minutes while I stood and waited at the counter 2) wouldn’t look at me and 3) wouldn’t hand me my change, she let it drop off her hand so she wouldn’t have to touch mine.
Now, I understand that Columbia is DEEP in the Old South and that there’s hundreds of years of history of racial and social divide perpetuating this kind of stuff. But having been born and raised in Southern California, never seeing color unless it was pointed out to me, this was a RUDE awakening. I understand why it happens, but I found it hard to believe that it still does in this culturally enlightened age…maybe with another 100 years of social progress, this will change! :crosses fingers, spreads tolerance and awareness:
I hope I haven’t offended anyone in sharing my experience here. It was not my intention to sterotype or cast a negative light on the region. I realize that not every person in Columbia, or in South Carolina, or in the South is like this or thinks like this! This is just my outsider’s view and experience, and my personal mantra in response – rise up against social injustice and inequality, effect change NOW!
Yamirskoonir
Des Moines
All the time. Two most memorable places:
Stone Mountain, Georgia, many years ago, but it was about 30-50 years behind the times back then. They had a drug store with a soda fountain and nickel ice cream (about 20% of what it cost anywhere else), 25 cents milkshakes, etc. Best was we could get there on our bikes, so it was like hopping on your bike and riding into a time warp. I’ll have to check it out next week and see how it’s aged.
Hickory, North Carolina. We were there for a friend’s wedding about 9 years ago, and we went to get some food one afternoon. We wanted to find NC BBQ, and we found a little place downtown. Went in to eat and everyone just stared. Mrs. ShibbOleth is Asian, so I thought maybe that was it (and it might have been), but they were polite and the crowd inside was mixed race, so that wasn’t it purely. We later learned that it was not considered proper for women to go into that restaurant. This was 1995! If women wanted food from there they had to get it at the carryout window. My wife may well have been the first woman to ever eat in the place. The food was good, the interior was old fashioned looking, with pool tables, some boards with holes that looked as if they fit over one end of the pool table for some game (I don’t know what), several rows of folding seats bolted to the ground for “the boys” to sit around and watch, wood panelled walls, etc. It was like being on the set of Cool Hand Luke or Deliverance or something. I should mention that everyone we spoke to was incredibly friendly, so I don’t want to put down the town, just very curious to find a sex segregated restaurant.
There’s a little town about 30 miles north of here named Parrott.
There used to be a sign at the city limits that read:
“Welcome to Parrott, GA. Where Time Stands Still.”
I had to drive through there a lot. That was the creepiest one mile drive ever!
Harlan KY.
A town right out of the 90’s.
1890’s that is!
The Burghoff restaurant in Chicago was “men only” until fairly recently. Chicago fercrissakes!
South Boston, Virginia.
My husband went there for an interview and I hung around town while I waited for him. I grew up in the suburbs of a large city, so I discovered my perspective on things was quite a bit different than those of the townsfolk of that area.
Take, for instance, the group of 4-5 men standing around on the street in front of a shop holding rifles. My first instinct was to run - men holding guns on a public street is Never A Good Thing where I grew up. But they were just standing around chatting, no big deal.
As I walked down the street, people would greet me. This also gave me a severe case of the willies, as strangers speaking to you on the street in my neck of the woods was, again, not a good thing. They almost always want money, and many of them are obviously high. These folks were just being polite.
I stopped at a drugstore to get my husband a Coke, thinking that I’d just find a vending machine or one of those coolers that has the plastic bottles. They did not have either of these things - I had to go to the lunch counter in the back and get a Coke from the soda fountain, in a paper cup, with a lid. It was only 25 cents for the large size.
It was so odd - I was really glad to leave, but there was no real reason why I should have been. It was obviously a much friendlier, safer place than what I was used to, but I guess familiar things are just somehow preferable to us even if they aren’t as nice.
I guess I want to hijack my own thread…but does anybody know the name of the “OUTER LIMITS” TV episode , where there was a house where time stopped (in 1925)? There was a married couple on their wedding night, and some guests…everybody was afraid to leave the house, because they would instantly AGE 50 years (and die) if they did!
Damn! I wanna see that one again!
It’s been said that when Southwestern flights land at Buffalo Niagara International Airport, a flight attendant will announce “Welcome to Buffalo … please set your watches back 25 years.”
Buffalo’s time warp is fixed on 1975. Some esamples:
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The city’s skyline hasn’t changed since 1975.
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There is still a very sizeable subculture of 1970s-style groders, heshers and metalheads. You’ll see far more tricked out Chevrolet Novas on the road than riced Honda Civics.
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The Buffalo News gets delivered by honest-to-goodness paperboys that walk door to door … in the evening. There’s still a traditional women’s section, and the wedding photos show brides only.
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Good old fashioned ethnic insularity, like what you would find in a film that took place in Brooklin in the 1960s and 1970s. Interracial dating … hell, interethnic dating just arrived on the scene.
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Milk delivery - still very common.
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Many national restaurant and retail chains that are otherwise everywhere in the United States lack a presence in Buffalo.
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There are far more American cars on the road than you’ll see in other parts of the country. Seems like huge Buick, Oldsmobile, Chevrolet, Cadillac and Pontiac four-door sedans rule the roads.
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Restaurant menus are straight out of not the 1970s, but the 1950s; seems like every menu item is preceded by the words “roast” or “fried”.
It’s “Don’t Open Till Doomsday”, written by Joseh Stefano, starring a bunch of people I guarantee you’ve never heard of, and broadcast January 20, 1964.
Just for the record, I hate this episode. A few years back Stefano or someone wanted to make an Outer Limis movie, and this is the episode they wanted to use. I’m glad that never happened.
I don’t have a great memory – I’ve taken most of this from The Outer Limits: The Official Companion by David J. Schow and Jeffrey Frentzen, pp. 198-206 (1986).
Petersburg, Ohio hasn’t changed since the 1970’s, other than they moved the high school, and the bar changed it’s name.
In what I call Far Northern California (that is to say, the area closest to the Oregon border), nothing new has been built since the War.
In some parts, that war was WWII, in other parts, WWI, and, in some really rustic areas, it was the Civil War.
On looking through the Outer Lmits book, I find that the element of instant aging outside the house isn’t in “Don’t Open Till Doomsday” – you’ve apparently concatenated two episodes. That feature is in “The Guests”, written by Donald S. Sanford, and based on a teleplay by Charles Beaumont (who wrote a lot of “Twilight Zone” episdes). It doesn’t star anyone you’ve heard of, either, and it was broadcast on March 23, 1964. It, too, features people trapped in a mansion with an alien THING controlling their destinies. There’s no wedding in this one, but the people, up to 120 years old, can’t leave the house or they’ll instantly age.
Thanks for the info…is this episodeavailableon DVD? I’d love to seeit again! 
According to This:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000068V9R/inktomi-dvdasin-20/ref%3Dnosim/103-9465571-7252650
"Don’t Open Till Doomsday is on Vol. III and The Guests is on Vol. IV.